


Totally Gnarly Keen Storytime!

by tklivory



Series: The Further Adventures of Dailana Cousland [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tklivory/pseuds/tklivory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The party tries to cheer up a depressed Dailana Cousland by telling stories.  Yes, it was Leliana's idea, why do you ask?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Totally Gnarly Keen Storytime!

"Come _on_ ," Leliana said as she pulled Alistair after her to the meeting room that Arl Eamon had set aside for them in Denerim. "You're the last one to arrive."

Over a wave of rising suspicion, Alistair demanded, "Arrive for what?"

Pausing in her relentless onslaught, she turned to look at him, expression serious. "Well, I've noticed that Dailana's been, well, _down_ since returning from that business with Howe. I thought maybe if we all got together and told stories we could cheer her up."

"Cheer her up?" The bard nodded. "With _stories?_ " She nodded once more. "Leliana, I appreciate the sentiment, but she just killed the man who killed her family. She's probably working through her feelings and emotions from that period. I don't see how telling _stories_ will help—" He stopped as Leliana began to pout. _Oh Maker, not the pout._

" _Please_ , Alistair? If not for me, then for her?" she pleaded, lower lip trembling. "I thought you were her friend."

Alistair groaned. _Are_ all _women born with the ability to twist men around their little fingers?_ "Fine," he agreed reluctantly, "I'll do it."

She clapped her hands together in glee. "Thank you, Alistair, thank you!" Seizing his hand in an implacable grip, she continued her informal kidnapping of the ex-Templar to the meeting room.

As they entered the room, all eyes within turned to regard them – except for Dailana's bright blue orbs. She sat, listless as always since returning from the Arl of Denerim's estate, staring out the window, her finger slowly twirling a lock of her hair. _She's going to get split ends if she isn't careful,_ Alistair thought in passing. _Wait a minute, why am_ I _thinking that?_

Shaking his head slightly, he sat next to Zevran and glanced around the room. As Leliana had said, they were the last to arrive. All the other companions were here, even Oghren. _Although if that smell and the condition of his hair and beard are any indication,_ he mused, _Leliana had to rouse him from a drunken stupor with a bucket of water._

"Well!" the bard in question said brightly, taking a seat at the head of the table. "I brought everyone here today to—"

"You mean commanded," grumbled Sten.

Waving her hand in dismissal of his words, Leliana pressed on. "I brought everyone here so that we could recall… happier times." The silence deepened. "I thought we could all tell a story about the happiest time in our lives so that others could… so that we could all feel better." Everyone's gaze flickered to the despondent Dailana, observing her uncharacteristic slouch, her unfocused gaze, and the total lack of the irrepressible energy that was normally her defining characteristic, then back to Leliana's pleading expression.

Sighing, Zevran stood from his chair. "If it is happy times we wish to recall, I could provide a tale or two." At Leliana's encouraging nod, he said, "I must admit that one of the happiest moments of my life occurred just recently. Just last week, in fact." A self-deprecating smile came over his face. "There we stood, our Wardens, myself, and the ever charming Shale –" ignoring the golem's disbelieving snort, he continued, "as I was saying, the ever charming Shale, before the most treacherous of enemies that we had yet faced."

"In truth, I thought that Gaxkang was a far more formidable opponent than—" Sten began.

Zevran _shushed_ the Qunari. "This is _my_ story, my large stoic friend. At any rate, there we stood before the dangerous Crows, my sins catching up to me at last. And then our dear leader stepped forward, told Taliesen that his 'hair was, like, totally bogus, dude, and your sense of dress? Barf me out, at least Zevran, like, has a sense of _style_ , ya know?' before he even had a chance to threaten us. She accepted without question my loyalty, and assaulted those dark evildoers with a ferocity that was beautiful to behold."

"Well, to be fair, Taliesen _did_ break one of her nails," Alistair pointed out. "He had no hope of victory after that."

"Ah, yes," Zevran mused as he sat down, eyes distant. "That is _also_ one of my happiest memories, my friend. In truth, I had never seen a head split three ways, but I can no longer make that claim after observing his fate at her blades." A contented sigh came from him. "Ah, the deadly sex goddess in her element. _Marvelous_."

Alistair glanced at Dailana, and noticed that although she still gazed out the window, her finger had paused in its twirling motion. Meeting Leliana's eyes, he saw that she had noted the change as well.

"Shale?" she said brightly. "Perhaps you could contribute next?"

"Me?" the golem repeated from her position against the wall behind Zevran. "Why should I participate in the strange antics of the fleshy creatures?"

Leliana leveled a glare at the golem and grated, "Because I _said_ so."

The golem seemed about to respond with her normal flippancy, but then paused and reconsidered. "Very well, if it insists, I will join the sister in this foolish endeavor." Crossing her arms, the golem shifted her weight slightly before beginning. "You would think that my age would allow me a vast plethora of memories from which to choose, but I find that one memory in particular brings me dangerously close to actually feeling like a warm, squishy being again."

Her gaze turned to the unresponsive Dailana at the foot of the table. "When we were poised between Caridin and Branka, I did not yet know all of who I was, but I knew that the Anvil should be destroyed. Yet I remember – dare I say, warmly? – that when the crazy Paragon tried to persuade it to destroy the golem Paragon, _it_ looked at me, as if it wanted to know how I felt, before it told the crazy Paragon that it was 'a rank skank with, like, the morals and judgment of a totally bogus ho-bag and the dress sense of, like, a Darkspawn in drag.'"

Alistair smiled at the memory, remembering Branka standing before them, speechless and uncertain exactly _how_ she had been insulted.

"No-one has ever cared about how I felt before. I was always merely a golem." Turning her head towards Dailana once more, she said, "But now I am 'a righteous, badass golem,' and that, I believe, is an appellation that I can… appreciate."

Slowly, Dailana's hand lowered into her lap, and a subtle tension seemed to ease out of her shoulders.

Encouraged, Leliana turned to the person on the other side of Zevran. "Morrigan, what say you?"

The witch sighed, an eyebrow arched sharply. "Really, _must_ we engage in this foolishness? I would prefer to return to the study of my mother's grimoire than hold hands in a circle and exchange fairy tales." She began to rise from the table as if to leave.

Surprisingly, it was Sten who addressed her with a hint of remonstrance in his tone. "You are as a _maraas imekari_ , woman. Cease this useless objection and do what is necessary."

Obviously surprised by the Qunari's admonition, Morrigan sat back into her chair abruptly, trying hard not to look like a child that had been told to sit down and behave. "Very well, if you insist on this absurdity, I will play along." She thoughtfully tapped a fingertip against her lower lip, her eyes straying to the quiet form of Dailana. Suddenly a smile crossed her face, for once completely without rancor or condescension. "Ah, yes. I do seem to recall a suitable moment."

Reaching into her pouch, she withdrew a small jeweled mirror and gazed at it tenderly, gently tracing the pattern on the golden casement with a bemused look in her eyes. Alistair saw Dailana's head turn slowly as his fellow Warden sought a glimpse of the trinket in Morrigan's hands.

Morrigan ended the moment when she abruptly closed her hands around the mirror and returned it to the bag at her waist. "But that is a moment that shall remain between the Warden and me. I am done here." And with that statement, she stood and swept imperiously from the room.

"Totally gnarly sweet mirror," Dailana whispered quietly into the silence that followed Morrigan's precipitous exit. Alistair felt like holding his breath as Dailana finally swiveled to face the others in the room for the first time since he had come in.

"Sten?" Leliana said hurriedly, not wanting to lose the momentum.

He snorted. "It should be obvious to even the most simple _imekari_ that happiness is attained only through the diligent execution of one's appointed duties. However," he continued before Leliana had a chance to object to his statement, "there is one moment that I will forever hold above any other."

His hand reached back reflexively to caress the hilt of the large sword that never seemed to leave his back save for battle and bloodshed. "When one is resigned to a life of emptiness and _maraas_ … The gift of _talan_ and completion is one which I will never forget or be able to sufficiently repay." Removing his hand from his sword, he said, " _Parshaara._ Let us finish this so that we may return to the task at hand."

A snort echoed throughout the room. "Is it my turn yet?" Oghren rumbled. "I mean, we have a merry little party going on here, right? Everybody talking about the pretty happy moments of their life and…" He interrupted himself with a seemingly endless rattling belch. "Heh, the pride of Orzammar lives on in yours truly! Heh, heh… Where was I?" Blearily, the dwarf looked around the room. "Oh, right, some sodding happy moment in the sodding sunshine while dancing around in a sodding circle of sodding glee? Not sodding now, all right?" His head dropped back down on the table.

Dailana stirred. "Like, dude, he is so, like, totally rude!" Alistair smiled. She didn't have all of her old spitfire back, and she hadn't smiled yet, but she was paying attention, at least. Dog walked over to her side and nuzzled her limp hand. She automatically responded by wrapping her arm around his neck and pushing her face into his neck.

"Alistair?" the bard asked pointedly.

Wrenching his gaze from his fellow Warden, he stammered, "M-me? Isn't it your turn next?"

The bard cleared her throat and looked pointedly at Dailana. Returning his gaze to the foot of the table, he found his fellow Warden's gaze fixed on him, strangely intent and evincing mysterious depths that he had never seen there before. "I—uh, well…"

He hesitated. He _had_ been planning on telling the story of how Duncan had rescued him from the Chantry, and the elation he had felt when he had realized that he finally had a place where he _belonged_ and was valued for _who_ he was, not _what_ he was. But as he gazed into those cerulean eyes, he realized that one moment, one bare instant of unalloyed joy surrounded by days and weeks of despair, surpassed even that.

Maintaining eye contact, he said, "When you stepped from Flemeth's hut in the Korcari Wilds, and I knew that I wouldn't have to be alone against whatever lay ahead… That—that's the moment _I_ treasure most, Dailana."

She smiled, a slow, brilliant smile that lit her entire face and dismissed the last shadows from underneath her eyes. In this smile was none of the impishness and vapidity that normally occupied her face, nor the sardonic condescension she used when trying to correct others on their 'bogus' behavior. It was simply, completely, and utterly _her_ , a strange and mysterious creature that he suddenly realized he knew very little about.

He recalled that he had seen that particular smile only once before: when she had stepped out of the hut after they were rescued from the Tower of Ishal, scars still dark from the freshly healed wounds left by Darkspawn arrows, and seen him standing at the edge of the pond. It had been the first time he had seen her smile at all since her arrival at Ostagar on the heels of an exasperated Duncan. He had almost forgotten in the intervening weeks how moody and angry she had been, how rarely she had spoken with her mouth in favor of using her blades, and how often she had stared into the distance, lost in thought that he could not follow.

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and she blindly got up and ran from the room.

Without thinking, he followed her, finally catching up with her just as she was closing the door to her bedroom. Quickly going inside, he shut the door behind him and placed his hands on her shoulders. "What is it, Dailana? What's wrong?"

She looked at him, her expression so forlorn that he just wanted to pull her in and hold her close, an urge he had never felt so strongly before.

She sniffled, rubbing her nose inelegantly with trembling fingers. "Did you, like, mean what you said? Really? You weren't, like, just _saying_ it to be, I dunno, nice?"

His brow furrowed in confusion. "Of course. Why would I lie?"

She hiccoughed as her tears started to flow faster. "Because no-one… no-one has, like, ever said such a nice thing about me. Nobody's ever, like, _wanted_ to be near me, or, like, wanted _anything_ from me except—except to use me for, like, access to my father or, ya know, getting horizontal, or…" And here she broke down completely, burying her face into his chest and weeping as if her heart were broken.

At a loss as to how to handle this completely unexpected breakdown from the seemingly unflappable Dailana, he clumsily put his arms around her and drew her close, instinctively patting her hair and murmuring soothing sounds into her ear. "Hush, hush, of _course_ , I want to be near you." He smiled slightly into her hair. "Even when you drive me crazy, I want to be with you."

She pulled back. He reached up and smoothed a thumb over her tear-streaked cheeks. In a girlish voice, she sighed, "Like, way?"

He grinned down at her and cupped her cheek in his hand. "Way."

Their lips met in a tender caress, a soft exploration of desire tempered with a subtle understanding that this was not a promise, not a prelude to further intimacy, not a moment of physical contact for the sake of pleasure. This kiss was only of atonement offered, comfort given, and the acknowledgment that no matter what the future held, there would, always and forever, be this moment of perfect accord and harmony.

Slowly they drew apart, wordlessly staring at each other for a few moments. Then her hand reached out and traced the line of his jaw. "Alistair," she whispered.

It was the first time she had actually spoken his name.

"Yes?" he replied quietly.

"Thank you."

He raised her hand and gently brushed his lips across her knuckles. "Your desire is my command."

**Author's Note:**

> Asala - soul
> 
> Imekari – child
> 
> Maraas – Nothing, or alone
> 
> maraas imekari – A child bleating without meaning
> 
> Parshaara – Enough!
> 
> talan - truth


End file.
